期刊
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
卷 348, 期 1, 页码 187-191出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07340.x
关键词
stars : early-type; stars : formation; stars : luminosity function, mass function; galaxies : star clusters; galaxies : stellar content
The observed masses of the most massive stars do not surpass about 150 M-circle dot. This may either be a fundamental upper mass limit which is defined by the physics of massive stars and/or their formation, or it may simply reflect the increasing sparsity of such very massive stars, so that the observation of even higher mass stars becomes unlikely in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. It is shown here that if the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a power law with a Salpeter exponent (alpha = 2.35) for massive stars then the richest very young cluster R136 seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) should contain stars with masses larger than 750 M-circle dot. If, however, the IMF is formulated by consistently incorporating a fundamental upper mass limit then the observed upper mass limit is arrived at readily even if the IMF is invariant. An explicit down-turn or cut-off of the IMF near 150 M-circle dot is not required: our formulation of the problem contains this implicitly. We are therefore led to conclude that a fundamental maximum stellar mass near 150 M-circle dot exists, unless the true IMF has alpha > 2.8.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据